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Lot Essay
The British photographer Eadweard Muybridge began to devise a means of photographing a horse in motion in 1872. Six years later he published the first plates of a horse walking, trotting, cantering and galloping in the scientific magazine La Nature. With his interest in painting races in a naturalistic and convincing manner, Degas very likely followed these developments and may have known about the illustrated lecture that Muybridge gave in the studio of Ernest Meisonnier in 1881. However, it is not until the publication of Muybridge's Animal Locomotion in 1887 that Degas's interest in Muybridge's work manifested itself in his sculpture. The artist drew copies of several frames from the sequential photographs in Animal Locomotion, and made wax models of at least six horses that are closely related to sources in the book, Rewald nos. VI, IX, XI, XIII, XIV (the present sculpture) and XVII. Charles Millard (op. cit.) has shown the present sculpture is similar to Bouquet with Rider, plate 631, frames 1-2 in Animal Locomotion.
Degas had previously painted horses in motion based on his own drawings done at the track and from studies of paintings and sporting prints by earlier artists (see Christie's, New York, sale, 7 November 2002, lot 114 for a drawing done after Carle Vernet). As a result, he incorporated in some of his earlier paintings positions that may have been effectively expressive of motion, but were impossible in reality. For example, Muybridge discovered that it is only when a galloping horse's legs are raised and tucked beneath its body that none touch the ground; many artists, including Degas, erroneously depicted a flying gallop showing all four legs outstretched with none reaching the ground.
As Millard points out, Degas's use of photographs should neither be exaggerated, nor should they detract from his achievement in modeling the horses, a process that actually involved the imaginative synthesis of several sources of information, including the artist's own firsthand observations:
As first published, the photographs would not have been of much use in the development of sculpturally convincing poses of movement. They appear as little more than silhouettes and, while demonstrating proper relationships among the animal's legs, would have served as barely more than suggestions for the creation of a sculptural space. Moreover, as Rodin pointed out, stop-motion photographs are less convincing artistic representations of action than such naturalistically inaccurate poses as the flying gallop, since all parts of the moving body are stopped at the same instant, giving an effect of immobility. Only with a certain amount of adjustment and the adaptation of positions from the previous and succeeding moments of action can a real illusion of movement be created. (ibid., pp. 100 and 101)
Degas had previously painted horses in motion based on his own drawings done at the track and from studies of paintings and sporting prints by earlier artists (see Christie's, New York, sale, 7 November 2002, lot 114 for a drawing done after Carle Vernet). As a result, he incorporated in some of his earlier paintings positions that may have been effectively expressive of motion, but were impossible in reality. For example, Muybridge discovered that it is only when a galloping horse's legs are raised and tucked beneath its body that none touch the ground; many artists, including Degas, erroneously depicted a flying gallop showing all four legs outstretched with none reaching the ground.
As Millard points out, Degas's use of photographs should neither be exaggerated, nor should they detract from his achievement in modeling the horses, a process that actually involved the imaginative synthesis of several sources of information, including the artist's own firsthand observations:
As first published, the photographs would not have been of much use in the development of sculpturally convincing poses of movement. They appear as little more than silhouettes and, while demonstrating proper relationships among the animal's legs, would have served as barely more than suggestions for the creation of a sculptural space. Moreover, as Rodin pointed out, stop-motion photographs are less convincing artistic representations of action than such naturalistically inaccurate poses as the flying gallop, since all parts of the moving body are stopped at the same instant, giving an effect of immobility. Only with a certain amount of adjustment and the adaptation of positions from the previous and succeeding moments of action can a real illusion of movement be created. (ibid., pp. 100 and 101)